Ballistic armor of the kind to which the present invention refers may be stand-alone armor or add-on armor, adapted for mounting to a wall of a structure to be protected, and it normally comprises a first layer of ceramic pellets facing the threat direction, adapted to dissipate the energy of an impacting projectile and to deform or shatter it, and a second, backing layer attached to the front layer and adapted, alone or together with the wall of a structure to be protected, to absorb the energy of the projectile including its fragments and prevent their penetration through the wall into the protected structure. Such armor normally has high multi-hit capability, since damage to the armor is localized to one pellet or a small number of pellets at the area of impact. The armor may further comprise additional layers, such as for example a front layer disposed in front of the first layer with respect to the threat direction.
US 2007/0034074 discloses one example of such armor and a method of its manufacturing, which may also be used to produce armor plates according to the present invention.
Armor plate of the kind described above may be mounted to a structure to be protected in a number of ways. In case, they are mounted by fixation elements such as, for example fixation screws, the armor plate may be pre-formed with bores for passing such fixation elements therethough and allowing their engagement with corresponding fixation elements in the structure to be protected.
Armor plates of the kind described may also have apertures different from the bores mentioned above, e.g. corresponding in shape and dimensions to portions of the protected structure's wall, which do not need to be protected with the described armor.
To provide the above bores or apertures, it is known to produce armor plates with inserts mounted in the layer of ceramic pellets, replacing a group of adjacent pellets therein, and having formed therein such bores or apertures. The inserts have a circumference of a standard, regular outer shape, normally rectangular or square, and gaps created between the circumference of each such insert and pellets of the armor plate surrounding it, normally filled with fragments of pellets or other ballistic material to avoid undesired discontinuities/voids in the layer of pellets.